Flag Football Follies: A Competitive Father Tries to Learn Patience with Young Kids

My son is playing flag football for the first time this year. The Asheboro Parks and Rec department has flag football for kids 5-7 and another league for kids 8-9. Since this is my son's first year playing, I decided to be an assistant. I figured I would learn the ropes this year and then be his head coach for his final two years.

Well, they had trouble finding people willing to be head coaches so they asked if I would move up from assistant. I said yes and now here we are.

We had 12 kids on our team and we had a bunch of practices before the games started this past Monday. Well, I never had a practice with more than eight kids and one kid dropped out completely.

When our first game came Monday, all 11 remaining kids showed up, all ready to play. We play 7-on-7, so I had to sit four kids out. The league mandates breaks in the first and third quarters and all subs have to go in at that point. This guarantees that each kid gets to play at least 10 minutes in a game.

Anyway, since we never had a full practice, we didn't get much chance to do more than 2-on-2 defensive drills. In our first game, our kids had a lot of problems playing on the big field (instead of the sectioned off area that we had our tiny practices at) and it really showed up when we were on defense. They ran all over us.

On offense we had two chances to score and came up inches short both times. One time we turned the ball over inside the 1-yard line. Our next chance our kid ran to the 1-yard line and then decided it would be a good time to run backwards. Aarrggh! These are the joys of coaching kids playing for the first time.

Long story shot - we were shut out on Opening Day. I felt bad for the kids because their first game went so poorly. Fortunately, the schedule maker had us right back out on the field Tuesday for our second game.

We played another team that got shut out in their first game. And as bad as things went for us in the first game, they went right in the second game. We posted a 27-0 victory and made tackles (flag captures) on defense and everyone had a chance to run with the ball on offense.

Our two best players sat most of the fourth quarter and the smaller kids got a chance to get a lot of playing time. The only negative about the game was that one of the kids came to the field without a mouth piece and the league rules dictate that he is not allowed on the field without one. So he did not get to participate in the win.

As for my son, he has a lot of ability but right now he gets a little intimidated about playing with the bigger kids. I felt awful because we got the ball late in the second quarter and we called two plays, the second of which was going to be a running play for my boy, who did not get a chance to run with the ball in the first game. The half ended after the first play.

He got a chance in the second half and made a nice catch of a pitch from the quarterback and ran hard up field. He got about six yards on the carry and I was so proud of him. I wanted to keep running plays for him but I had other kids to think about, too.

After watching him in practice, I thought he was going to be more of a contributor on defense. He showed a good sense of running to the ball carrier and was okay at grabbing the flag.

But in the first game he was just kind of clueless out there. He didn't run hard at all and was never close to being in a position to make a play. He did so much better in the second game. And it looks like he may be a factor on offense instead of defense, too.

I'm having a lot of fun coaching the kids. Obviously I loved seeing my son do well when he got the ball, but I've been happy to see the other kids on the team run hard and compete and gain confidence. I can really see a difference already with the younger kids. At first we had a couple of boys who were too scared to talk above a whisper and now they are yelling and running around and mixing it up with the older kids out there.

I wish we had a game Wednesday, too, but we'll have to wait until next Monday. We play every Monday and every other Tuesday in September and October. And the good news is that we get to play the team that beat us again later in the season. That game is October 14th, not that I looked it up or circled it on my calendar or anything.